 Woke up to this marvelous view of the city! We're staying up at "Hotel Hill", one of many accommodations situated on a hill overlooking the city. In the morning, we get a beautiful view of Dalat, which is well-known for its French colonial architecture. There's even a little taste of Paris on the left - a telecommunications tower shaped liked the Eiffel Tower!  These are the steps we have to climb everytime we go to and from our hotel We're doing a lot of climbing in hilly Dalat and Neda remarks that we must be fairly high up in altitude and the air must be thinner, because we're both so out of breath. So I check the Internet and we're only at 1,500m above sea level. So not that high, really. We're just out of shape... :( Bahn Mi has become my favorite meal in Vietnam. For breakfast, we set out to find the best Bahn Mi place in Dalat.  You know it's a good place because the line up extends all the way out into the street! I always wonder whether these line-ups are a self-fulfilling prophecy. A couple of people line up at an empty restaurant, then other people seeing a line-up form, think, "Hey maybe that place is good?" and then suddenly there's a half-hour queue that's formed because of those first few folks that decided to eat there... Everybody's just following everyone else.  Bahn Mi Xiu Mai - Meatball soup served with French baguettes  I got greedy and ate all my meatballs first. This is Make-Your-Own-Sandwich style We had to constantly peer over at the other tables to learn how to eat our meal, for fear of committing some sort of culinary faux-pas, like dipping your food in the bowl used for cleaning your fingers. Then I realized that table was a bunch of Asian tourists too, and they thought I was Vietnamese so they were looking to see how I ate my food! I knew it! Everybody's just following everyone else! I dipped my fingers in my soup to see if they would do the same. They didn't... :(  Looks like a European town. You wouldn't even know you were in Vietnam were it not for all the pho and bahn mi shops lining the streets! The Vietnamese drove out the French occupiers after WWII, but left the buildings in Dalat intact. This city seems so out-of-place after riding through the small villages between here and Ho Chi Minh.  Dalat is littered with examples of French colonial architecture  Walking around Dalat  Dalat's famous Crazy House Not too far from where we are staying is one of Dalat's most popular tourist attractions: the Crazy House, built by Dang Viet Nga. She's the daughter of Vietnam’s former general secretary Truong Chinh.
Inside, psychedelic bridges shoot up into the sky above all these misshappen and garishly painted structures, so you can get a pteradactyl's-eye view of everything. The steps are super narrow and thin guardrails around thigh-level, shaped like vines, are the only thing stopping you from tumbling 30 feet to the floor below. This would never pass North American safety standards!  Hanging on for dear life here! The entire time we're walking around the Crazy House, I had Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" playing in my head. It really felt as if we were Alice, fallen down the rabbit hole! The architect cited Spanish builder Gaudi as her inspiration, but I thought this was closer to Salvador Dali's style! So surreal!  Sea 'shrooms. One bite makes you larger, go ask Neda when she's ten feet tall There are several closed off spaces in the Crazy House. These are actually guest rooms and apartments that you can rent for the night! I said to Neda, "Hey, maybe we should have stayed here last night!", but she replied, "No, look at all these tourists walking around". Good point! I'd actually have to wear pants all the time, no walking around in my underwear all day. That's no good...  This is Neda's favorite detail, a conch: "Can you ear me now?" The inner ear of the conch leads to more madness. OMG, just typing that out is a trip. The Crazy House is on a plot of land 2000 square meters in size. Even the grounds outside are covered in crazy concrete structures that looked like they crash-landed straight out of a drug-fueled nightmare. It would probably take about a good two hours to see everything on the site. It's getting pretty late, and we still have to make the ride down to the coast, so we head back to the hotel.  Something we haven't seen very often in Vietnam - "Big Bore" Honda Shadow Everything's relative, isn't it? This motorcycle reminded me of the reason why we are riding Vietnam today instead of when our RTW tour took us through SE Asia seven years ago (Wow, has it really been that long?) I remember researching crossing into Vietnam, but at the time, there were import restrictions at the land borders which prevented motorcycles over 150cc from entering. That put a stop to our plans for riding here with our CRF250Ls. We've seen some bigger bikes here and now (saw a Harley riding around the other day), so either the owners have imported them via air, or the rules have changed.  I've also spotted these vehicles: Vinfast, with their distinctive V logo, a few times in our travels. Never heard of them! I've seen both sedans and SUVs with that logo, they look like a premium brand. I looked them up on the Internet and was surprised to find out that they're a Vietnamese company (although based in Singapore). Only 5 years old, they launched their first models in 2019. They make electric vehicles and hybrids, so basically they're the Vietnamese Tesla. I wonder what the Vinfast CEO is like and whether there is a Vietnamese Twitter whose stock I should be shorting...? We quickly pack up and head out of town. It's still cool enough that we have to ride with our windbreakers on, but quickly shed them as QL27, the road to the coast starts to descend and the temps rise once again. Just out of Dalat city limits, the road does that fun thing where it decides it no longer wants to keep running straight any longer, so it switches back on itself and darts left and right, like a dog wanting to play: 
Game on, little doggy! Game on!Taking curves downhill, we downshift to make full use of engine braking to modulate our speed... except there is absolutely no engine braking at all. No matter how many times we tap down on the shifter, it feels like the bike is free-wheeling into the turns despite the engine screaming in low gear. LOL - no displacement, no engine braking... It's a very disconcerting feeling as we're forced to carry the brakes deep into the corners, only releasing the binders after each apex. Totally not used to riding like that. Hope we don't toast the brake pads. Reminds me of this: :)   Rest Stop - literally! This is the Vietnamese equivalent of those rest centres you see on North American highways, where you can get food and drinks. Here, they take their rest stops pretty seriously - those are hammocks you see in the background, so you can take a nap after eating so you don't fall asleep on the road! What a brilliant idea! As we're stopped at the side of the road, we see scooters bomb down the road past us. See. Not hear. They've turned their engines off and are just coasting in neutral down the hill, saving gas in the process. OOOOHHHH! So *THAT'S* how you do it around here! Yeah. No. We're not doing that...  We get a great view of the twisty roads that still awaits us from the summit. Nice! Neda exclaims, "Best road so far!" I totally agree.  At the bottom of the mountain, another rest stop We stop for a nice refreshing coconut drink, this one is not in its original packaging, but in a glass of ice with some juicy coconut pulp in it. I'm feeling so tired at this point. It's because we changed up our rhythm today. Normally we ride first thing in the day, then do all our sightseeing after. I Just want to find a hammock and rest my eyes right now. My brain is feeling quite pulpy like the bits of coconut floating in my glass. It's another hour and a half of riding in the lowlands till we reach the coastal town of Phan Rang. Temps are back up over 30°C so we get to trade in our sweaters for shorts and flip-flops! Yay!  These are the crabs we have been saving ourselves up for We were so gluttonous at dinner! We've brought our embarrassingly large Western appetites to Vietnam. The amount of food we ordered tonight was more than a Vietnamese family of four eats. We know this because we saw a Vietnamese family of four eat just beside us... The waitress' eyes bulged while taking our order, as if to say, "When will the rest of your family be joining you?" BTW, it seems Neda and I are starting a family. While waddling home for dinner, my food baby belly hangs prodigiously over the top of my shorts - third trimester style. Twins too, so Imma tell that waitress that our family of four will be returning real soon...  Sunset on Phan Rang Long day. Great riding. Amazing food. Too full to talk. Time to rest my eyes. Good night!
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